A violin once owned by Albert Einstein has sold at auction for £860,000 (approximately US$1.15 million)—more than double its estimated value—at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Gloucestershire, England. The item went "under the hammer" on October 8, making history with a bang.
The 1894 Zunterer violin, believed to be Einstein’s first, was part of a collection gifted to physicist Max von Laue in 1932, just before Einstein fled Germany. With a 26.4% commission added, the final price is expected to exceed £1 million (over $1.34 million), potentially setting a record for a non-Stradivarius violin not previously owned by a concert musician.
Celebrity items are often put up for auction in order to raise money for NGOs and foundations, and sometimes they're simply sold to the highest bidder because they're seen as valuable cultural artifacts. Click through to see the other celebrity items—from used tissues to kidney stones—for which people have paid eye-watering amounts of money.
All amounts in USD.